Child develops trusting relationships with nurturing adults.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Help children and families identify and develop supportive relationships with family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, community members, and service providers
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Model language of assistance and support (“How can we work together to figure this out?”)
Child experiences a sense of belonging in environments that link, extend, and affirm the child’s family and community. Child expresses comfort and joy with human diversity.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Convey to families that you respect them as their child’s best advocate
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Create opportunities for children to know each other by interviewing each child in a group as part of a name study or family study
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Incorporate the four goals of Anti-Bias Education (listed below) into the daily curriculum
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Each child will demonstrate self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities
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Each child will express comfort and joy with human diversity; accurate language for human differences; and deep, caring human connections
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Each child will increasingly recognize unfairness, have language to describe unfairness, and understand that unfairness hurts
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Each child will demonstrate empowerment and the skills to act, with others or alone, against prejudice and/or discriminatory actions
Child develops a sense of self through noticing and developing their own interests, preferences, and abilities. Child increasingly develops self-awareness, confidence, family pride, and positive social identities.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Create time for children to share their work, either before or after a working period; allow children to choose the work they want to share
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Display children’s work with their words of guidance or explanation beside it
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Create structures for children to show their interests and preferences, such as choice time
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Make time for reflective conversations (“How are you doing in our classroom routines? How is reading going?”)
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Avoid asking children to line up or choose partners by gender
Child forms deep, caring, human connections by imagining what someone else may be thinking or feeling and responding with care. Child recognizes unfairness and understands that unfairness hurts.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Observe that life seems easier for some people and harder for others, and explore with children the reasons for these inequities; teach that inequities are not a consequence of anything that marginalized people did wrong
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Teach children to show compassion and support for their peers
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Assume children’s good intentions
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When children come to educator with an interpersonal conflict, ask them to start resolving it by first trying to imagine and articulate how the other party feels, and then invite them to articulate to each other how they really feel
Child navigates friendships with peers through cooperation and negotiation.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Consider shared interest among children as basis for connection; children who like to build, children who like to read about animals, etc
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Suggest out-of-school time connections for families
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Offer shared language for respectful conversation, including respectful disagreeing: (“I disagree” rather than “No! You’re wrong!”)
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Read books about cooperation and negotiation, such as
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Click , Clack, Moo: Cows That Type , by Doreen Cronin
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Cat and Rat , by Ed Young
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The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig , by Eugene Trivizas
Child expresses and manages their feelings and impulses.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Read books about self-control, such as:
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Sophie Gets Angry , Really, Really Angry , by Molly Bang
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Ahn’s Anger , by Gail Silver
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Lily’s Purple Plastic Purse , by Kevin Henkes
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Discuss the books with the children, asking
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Have you ever felt the same way as ___?
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What would you do if you were ___?
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What would you say to___?
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Create strategy charts for feelings, impulses, and ways to act on them
Child follows the rhythms, rules, and routines of the learning environment.
Ways educators might support the child's development
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Reflect on your own cultural expectations related to discipline
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Create some routines together; ask children, for example, how they think an area could best be organized and use their input to create some routine procedures
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Decide on logical consequences for rules with all staff; reconsider the use of social exclusion as a consequence
